September 14, 2026

The Self You Defend

All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists.

Huang Po was a ninth-century Chan master in Tang dynasty China, teacher of the fiery Linji Yixuan; his talks were recorded by his student Pei Xiu and became this foundational text on the doctrine of One Mind. This opening line makes a bold claim: every Buddha and every ordinary being shares one undivided mind, and nothing stands apart from it as a separate soul or private self. In the Eastern tradition, this is the heart of Non-Self — what we call 'I' is not a fixed possession lodged somewhere inside the body but a pattern that arises fresh each moment within this shared field of awareness, the way a wave rises and falls within one ocean. Practice means noticing, again and again, that the sense of a solid self is assembled out of passing thoughts and sensations rather than being some stone-like core that must be guarded. Once we stop treating the self as private property under constant threat, the grip of much suffering begins to loosen on its own.

A principle of Eastern Wisdom: Non-Self →